


Eavesdropping

by convolutedConcussion



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - They Talk It Out, F/M, Nicole Has No Idea How She Got Dragged Into This
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 11:45:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11805339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convolutedConcussion/pseuds/convolutedConcussion
Summary: Anonymous said:hi here is a prompt:) so dolls is sitting in his office & wynonna pulls nicole into the black badge room & doesn't know dolls is in his office & wynonna is basically telling nicole like "i don't know why i feel this way towards him but every time he looks at me i just want to jump him, you know?" and she's like "uhh no but ok" and dolls can hear everything they're saying





	Eavesdropping

Here’s a thing he’ll never miss:  Incident reports.  In spite of the fact that he never actually has to fill one out ever again, though, old habits die hard and so Dolls ends up spending, just, _so much_ time documenting what they’ve encountered.  It’s not like he minds much, it’s the kind of mindless task that’s almost relaxing, in a way, and he reasons that the records are necessary.  He’s typing up their latest encounter when he hears the door open.  He’s back in his office, door mostly closed, and he barely even looks up.  Between him, Jeremy, Wynonna, and the others who are damn near constantly in and out of their appropriated headquarters, it’s not like he’s surprised that someone’s in there, and people not part of their operation—it stings to not be able to call it Black Badge, all things being equal, it defined so much of him for so long, it’s like losing a part of himself—don’t typically have the stones to just straight up walk in through the front door.  So, he doesn’t so much a pause until he hears voices.

“Jesus, Earp, what is _up_ with you?” Nicole demands.

From where he’s sitting, he doesn’t see either of them until Wynonna paces into and then out of his line of sight.  He leans back a little to try to track her progress.  “I have no idea!” she says shrilly.  “It’s—it’s Dolls.”

He frowns; Nicole repeats, “Dolls.”

“The very same,” she groans, pacing back in front of the door.  “He’s like—like I’m used to wanting to jump him, I’ve got eyes, you know?”

“I do not,” she replies, deadpan.

“Har, har,” Wynonna says.  “I just mean, like… I dunno, he’s hot, that’s not new?”  He cringes a little, looks around for a window to jump out of, because he really should not be listening to this—he _wants_ to keep listening, but he _really, emphatically should not_.  “But lately, like, God, he’s just—and I’m—”  She cuts off with a frustrated whine.

“Are you, um… trying to talk to me about your feelings?” she asks quietly.

“Kind of?” she responds, sounding frustrated.

“Well, you’re doing _great_ ,” Nicole says so earnestly Dolls forgets his guilt and mild horror—he’s gonna have to confront this reality at some point—for a moment and can’t help his smile.  “I mean, I’d use actual words, but you’re doing… the face thing is sufficient.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sweet or an asshole,” he hears Wynonna say thoughtfully, and he can _just_ see her hop up onto the table, back to him.

“Little of column A, little of column B,” Nicole says, voice gentle as she sits next to her.  Whatever she says next is too soft for Dolls to hear, but Wynonna makes a low, forlorn noise and drops her head onto Nicole’s shoulder. 

A moment later, she shoots up and laughs, “Nope!  Nope, not even—that’s a terrible decision, not happening, nope.”

“Heard loud and clear,” Nicole says, both hands held up in surrender.  “But, like, is there a particular reason why you’re noping so hard?”

Wynonna shoves to her feet and stomps out of sight and he can just barely hear her snap, “Because my _feelings_ and any resulting nighttime habits are my problem?  And we’re both the worst at them?  And what if—yep, nope.”

Curiosity getting the better of him, he rolls his chair to the side, leans back as far as he can without tipping over until he can see her face.  Her expression shoots right through him because it’s _sad_ and tired and open—something in his gut twists, but he can’t bring himself to look away.  Too soon, she seems to steel herself, and then the walls come back up.  Her lips twist and she rubs her forehead, looking embarrassed.

“Anyway… I’d appreciate it if you never brought this up again for obvious reasons, also thank you,” she says quickly, and he leans back even further to watch her breeze out the door.

The _only_ thing he can do is sit like that, lost in thought—she has feelings!  She has feelings about him!  That she kind of verbalized!  What the shit is he supposed to do with that information?  He feels his chair start to wobble but doesn’t catch it in time, clatters to the floor.

“Dude, are you serious?” he hears as his office door creaks open.  “Like, seriously serious?  The whole time?”

“Yeah,” he groans, kicking the chair off his legs and pushing to his feet.  He’s met with the full force of Nicole’s glare, which he was not expecting.  “I was just in here, okay?  I didn’t set out to spy on you.  I was _working_.”

“Uh-huh, and when she was _confessing her love for you_ , you were still working?” she demands, honest-to-god _angry_ like he’s never seen her.

Scratching his cheek, he tells the doorframe, “No, no I’d stopped working by then.”

Eyebrow cocked, she crosses her arms.  “I’m gonna tell Waverly—I’d tell Wynonna and let _her_ tear your balls off, but yanno, that’d devastate her, and I already feel bad for her,” she says coolly as she turns on her heel.

“Wait!  Wait, I can—I can fix this,” he hisses, following after her.  “Or maybe not fix it but I can talk to her.”

“You better,” she scoffs.  “I don’t wanna lie to her about this, it would be _really_ shitty, and, like, she doesn’t deserve that.”

“I know she doesn’t,” he frowns, and it cuts a little deeper than he expects.  “I’m not—it’s not like I don’t care about her, Nicole.”

For a second, there’s nothing but open shock on her face before it’s clouded by frustration.  “Oh, Jesus Christ, you love her too,” she sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.  Even though he’s pretty sure he’s technically still in trouble, he can’t help the slow flip his gut does when she says it, because even _he_ hasn’t actually said it yet.  “You do, don’t you?” she asks, eyes sharp, so far from the usual puppy-dog look he usually sees on her.

“I—um, yeah, I do,” he breathes, not expecting the relief that comes with the admission.

“You two are ridiculous—you _both_ owe me a fruit basket,” she groans.  “Talk to her, and I won’t tell her sister, but if you hurt her, I’m gonna—”

“You’re seriously giving me the shovel talk right now?” he asks incredulously.

Finally, she smiles, if only just a little, and looks down.  “Listen, I got it _at least_ five times, and I’ve never gotten to give it before, so…” she trails off with a shrug.

\--

The thing about being under a time constraint to, like, talk it out with Wynonna under threat of having Waverly absolutely _wreck_ him—it’s not that he doesn’t think he can handle her, but he doesn’t really _want_ to have to—is that it kinda lends some urgency to the situation.  It’s just that every time it’s come up, or an opportune moment has arisen, something terrible has happened, and it’s been so much easier to just _not_ , to just shove all those inconvenient feelings to the back burner.  Still, it takes three days for him to work up to getting her alone.

“Hey,” he says gently as she’s getting up after a briefing on the latest horror terrorizing the town.  She freezes, looks around, points at herself questioningly.  “Yeah, you,” he laughs, unable to completely stifle the nervous quake in his gut.  “Come get terrible fast food burgers with me.”

She snorts and nods with an accusatory, “You just want me there so you can pretend I coerced you into it.”

“Caught me,” he replies, smirking.  “Come with me anyway.”

“Well, with a pitch like _that_ ,” she huffs, starting towards the door.

He follows, tries to ignore Nicole’s pointed look on their way out of the station.  She gives him a weird look when he grabs the passenger door for her, but doesn’t say anything, just climbs in.  They drive in silence and she fiddles with the radio dials because she _always_ fiddles with the radio dials and he’s not entirely sure when that stopped being annoying.  He catches her looking at him a little bit like she _expects_ it to be annoying him.  While he pulls into the drive thru, she leans over the console to stare at the menu.

“I want the double with bacon—”

“Extra onions, and no ketchup,” Dolls finishes with a smile, just to see the way her eyes go wide and her lips curl.  “Vanilla shake so you can dip your fries in it, because your eating habits are disturbing at best.”  She wrinkles her nose at him and props her chin on her hand, eyes on him in a way that makes his heart stutter.

He orders, they get their food, Wynonna immediately pops the lid on her shake and dunks a fry into it.  When he pulls off to the side of the road, she swallows and says mildly, “I hope you know that if you were literally anyone else, this would be hella unnerving.”

“I guess I’m touched it’s not, then?” he responds.  “Burger, please.”

She drops his burger into his upturned hand, pulls out her own, and then sets the bag up on the console, muttering guiltily, “I may have been eating from both fries.”  They dig in, and it’s fine while neither of them are talking, but then she sets her half-finished burger onto her knee and clears her throat and asks, “So, is there a _reason_ we’re parked here in the middle of nowhere and not eating at the station?”

“Well,” he hedges, not quite meeting her gaze.  “Mostly because I wanted to tell you something, and I didn’t want you yelling in the station again.  Nedley says you scare people who are just trying to go about their business.”

“Wow,” she scowls.  “Okay, what did you want to tell me?  Am I fired?”

“You are not fired, I just—” he looks over, her face guarded but expectant.  “It’s just that the other day, I was sort of in my office—”

“Working on your supernatural definitely-not-a-diary?” she interrupts, eyes dropping.

“It’s not—yes, anyway, I sort of… heard some things.  That you said.  About me,” he says haltingly.

Her face scrunches up as her teeth drag over her lower lip and she still doesn’t look at him.  “Yep, that happened,” she groans.  “Are you sure I’m not fired?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” he laughs.  He waits for her eyes to lift, mulling over what he wants to say next.  “The thing is, I’m—Jesus, I’m _really_ into you.”  Her lips part and eyes widen and for a moment his heart has migrated into his throat, beating hummingbird-fast. 

Agonizingly slowly, she smiles.  “Me too,” she says, then frowns.  “I mean, to you.”

“That doesn’t even make s—”

She lunges forward and slams her mouth into his, laughing into the too-hard kiss before yanking back and eyeing him critically.  “So, wait, you heard me having a _very private_ conversation with Nicole and decided, ‘I’m gonna confess my feelings for that crazy chick over awful cheeseburgers’?” she demands. 

“Actually…”

“Oh, God.”

He holds up his hands and says in a rush, “Haught _may_ have caught me and threatened to sic your sister on me for eavesdropping, which I definitely wasn’t doing.”  At her cocked brow, he amends, “Which I definitely wasn’t doing it on purpose.”

For a long moment, she just stares at him, smile crooked and private, before she grabs the front of his shirt and drags him forward, kisses him with unexpected gentleness.  When he shifts closer, wanting more, wanting her closer, just goddamn _wanting_ , the bag of fries tumbles to the floorboard and he freezes.  Just as he’s pulling away, her grip tightens and she whispers, “No, no, wait, I’m not done yet, you can go back to being a clean freak after.”

“I just don’t want ants, I don’t see what’s so freakish about that,” he murmurs, letting her reel him back in.

**Author's Note:**

> Ayyy, shoutout to that anon for really speaking to me with this prompt tbh
> 
> I hope everyone liked this, because it's ridiculous. Come by my [Tumblr](http://johnisntevendead.tumblr.com) where I never stop talking about Wynonna Earp.


End file.
